What is happening around is reminiscent of an earthquake: Russian missiles are exploding in Kyiv and Kharkiv, but the ground is shaking in Moscow.
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Entire markets and industries are collapsing, private businesses are shutting down, civilian projects, mass media, acquaintances are leaving by the hundreds. Western companies are also fleeing Russia, ceasing supplies, closing offices, and recalling employees.
The borders are closing at light speed: European airspace is already off-limits for Russians, leased jets are being recalled from Russia: the country is losing its airplanes, if not its entire aviation industry. Turkey, the Middle East, and Latin America remain open, although ticket prices have soared to thousands of dollars.
The smartphones and tablets of everyone leaving Russia are inspected, lest they contain suspicious correspondence and subscriptions, and are interrogated with regard to their stance on the war and the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All await anxiously Friday's joint meeting between the two houses of parliament, which Putin is also scheduled to address: they might declare a national state of emergency, mobilization, freezing of assets, and some politicians, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for instance, have even suggested reinstating the death penalty.
Russia is falling apart before our very eyes. Everything is gone: normal daily activities, institutions, media, ties with the global world that have been cultivated for over 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union – all this has been destroyed within a single week, starting with Feb. 24, the day Russia began a full-scale war in Ukraine.
In the blink of an eye, the country was thrust back into the past, to the 1980s, the peak of the Cold War. In those days, the USSR was the "evil empire," as then-US President Ronald Reagan called it. It threatened the world with nuclear missiles, shot down a Korean Boeing, and waged a bloody war in Afghanistan.
Putin's wish to restore the Soviet Union has come true. Russia is now an "evil empire" that once again threatens the world with nuclear weapons, shots down a Malaysian Boeing, and wages a bloody war on its southern border. In the past week, Russia lost nearly half the number of soldiers killed during ten years of fighting in Afghanistan.
It is mindboggling how quickly it all unraveled. It reminds me of the words of Vasily Rozanov, who in 1917 wrote in "The Apocalypse of Our Time" that "Rus has disappeared in two days. In three days at most. Not even Novoye Vremya could have been closed as fast as Rus was." We can same the say today: Russia has disappeared in three days. Not even the Memorial society could have neem shot down faster than Russia.
And yet, cars continue to be driven on the streets of Moscow. The internet still works. Television channels broadcast the usual talk shows. Restaurants are open. Couples fall in love. But all this is nothing but a thin coating of reality, which has cracked and uncovered underneath blackness and emptiness, a wind of history, a relentless plunge of an entire country into the abyss.
The apocalypse in the head of one small person with mental problems has created an apocalypse for an entire nation. It must be stopped before it turns into a global nuclear apocalypse, which the little man with the red button has already made clear he longs for. The fate of all of humankind will be sealed in Ukraine.
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